Keith Shen

Most people arrive with the same two quiet questions. Is this going to hurt, and is it safe. The short answers are that acupuncture is very safe in trained hands, and that most people find it far gentler than they expected. Here is what actually happens. The needles Acupuncture needles are hair-fine. They are nothing like the needles used for injections or blood tests, which are hollow and a great deal thicker. Every needle is sterile and single-use. It comes out of a sealed pack in front of...

The first thing you notice is the warmth arriving. Not the flat heat of a wheat bag sitting on your skin, but something that sinks in and keeps going, settling somewhere underneath the muscle. After a minute there's a soft tingling that spreads outward. Sometimes the warmth seems to travel, following a line up the leg or across the shoulder, turning up somewhere you weren't expecting it. If you've carried tight, aching muscles for years, the sensation is hard to describe as anything other...

How an acupuncturist thinks about pain, and what we are trying to change with a few thin needles. You may have heard some strange-sounding acupuncture stories. A needle in the hand for a back that has just seized up. A needle in the foot for a headache, ringing ears, or nights spent staring at the ceiling. From where we sit, these are familiar conversations. Ordinary Tuesday work. They can sound strange because of an assumption many of us carry without noticing: if something hurts here,...